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We launched the award-winning END7 campaign in 2012 to build a grassroots movement to end the seven most common neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). With your support, we mobilized funding to support programs that treated more than 50 million people, helped increase US and UK funding for NTDs and spread awareness of the global NTD burden. Now, five years later, we are concluding the END7 campaign. We are grateful for the support of all of our followers, student groups and generous donors who made the campaign such a success.

Early on a beautiful spring morning in the nation’s capital, a group of Georgetown University undergraduates gathered on the corner of First Street and Constitution Avenue, far from their textbooks and thoughts of their looming final exams. Their unusual study break? A day of meetings with congressional offices to advocate against cuts to critical U.S. government funding for global health.

Neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) are the most common affliction of the world’s poorest people. Thriving in communities that lack access to health services, adequate sanitation and clean water, NTDs blind, disable and disfigure, trapping families in a cycle of poverty and disease.

While rarely talked about, Neglected Tropical Diseases are the most widespread ailment among the world's poorest of the poor – yet also ironically the most prevalent in top global economies, experts say.

Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) are “the most important diseases you've never heard of. These are the most common afflictions of the world's poor,” Peter Hotez, MD, PhD, told CNA Nov. 11.

More than 500 leading scientific researchers, Catholic officials and policy makers from around the globe gathered at the Vatican on November 10-12, 2016, to address neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) and rare diseases. The Pontifical Council for Health Care Workers, which was established by Pope John Paul II to help coordinate the Vatican’s health care related activities, convened the conference. Sabin Vaccine Institute President Dr. Peter Hotez gave the keynote address on NTDs. At the conclusion of the conference, remarks from Pope Francis were shared with conference participants. These remarks highlighted how the effort to control and eliminate NTDs aligns with the Catholic Church’s social teachings, and called for international commitment to treating and preventing NTDs and rare diseases. The complete transcript of Pope Francis’s remarks are below.

Vatican City – November 10, 2016 –Peter Hotez, M.D., Ph.D., president of the Sabin Vaccine Institute (Sabin) and director of the Sabin Product Development Partnership (Sabin PDP), today will help kick off the first-ever Vatican conference on neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) and rare diseases with a keynote address.